“I have a tendency when reading biographies and autobiographies about elderly or dead people of great accomplishment to want to skip through the early part, especially the childhood.” So wrote Jenny Diski, who now contributes an essay to Meeting the Devil, a collection of short pieces of memoir originally published in the London Review of Books. I must confess to feeling likewise, though usually the temptation to skip is soon overcome with an inner scolding: that skipping is cheating. I was once a painfully slow reader who enjoyed reading immensely. Finishing books was difficult, but I would persevere, and feel an amazing sense of achievement when I could put a volume back on the shelf. I could not – and perhaps still cannot – feel that satisfaction if I had skipped as much as a page.

So during my teenage years the biographies and memoirs stacked up, a bookmark perhaps a quarter of the way through each. They were not all badly written, and ranged Denis Healey to the Mitford sisters. But none were short, and I began to feel a distrust for any writer who felt the absolute necessity to begin at the beginning. Then I read Stephen Fry’s much-lauded tome, and I failed to find the inner genius within the incoherent mess that is Moab Is My Washpot. Perhaps there was a point to dogmatic regulation in writing biography: or perhaps we should just be suspicious of national treasures. Continue reading →